Youths abandoning job hunt a worry: analyst

Canadians should be worried by the number of young Canadians who are giving up on the job hunt, labour analysts said.

Friday’s release by Statistics Canada’s of the em revealed that, though the overall unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage points, there was also a “notable decline in the number of youths participating in the labour market.”

That drop in the youth workforce is worrying, says Sylvain Schetagne, Senior Economist at the Canadian Labour Congress.

“The trend of the labour market is pretty grim for younger workers,” he said.

“Most strikingly, the employment rate for youth … has fallen very sharply, over the past two years, by five percentage points from 59.5 per cent to 54.6 per cent. And the proportion of youth with jobs who are working part-time has risen from 44.9 per cent to 47.6 per cent.”

The decrease in the number of youth in the labour force, he said, is partly due to students no longer choosing to work while at school or simply giving up altogether.

But according to Paul Ferley, Assistant Chief Economist at the Royal Bank of Canada, having more youth enrolled in post-secondary education might benefit the economy in the longer term, as future jobs will need skilled and educated workers.

Schetagne was less optimistic, pointing out that already 40 per cent of unemployed Canadians have a post-secondary level of education.